The Guardian’s ‘ursus bogus’ moment

This ratty story reminds me of the polar bear incident I just posted about this morning at PolarBearScience.

Canadian polar bear researchers Ian Stirling and Nick Lunn gave Suzanne Goldenberg at The Guardian the results of their new Western Hudson Bay population estimate, from a study that has not been published anywhere. There is not even a government report available! This is the first mention of this new estimate, anywhere, and it’s in The Guardian. Folks have been waiting for it for years, and it’s reported in The Guardian.

Forget no raw data available – in this case there is no data available period. How can science self-correct behaviour like this?

Mann rose to prominence by supposedly being able to detect “faint” signals using “advanced” statistical methods. Lewandowsky has taken this to a new level: using lew-statistics, lew-scientists can deduce properties of population with no members.

In 1987, when the first reliable estimates of polar bear population were made, using a technique known as mark and recapture, there were about 1,200 bears in the western Hudson Bay area; by 2004, the figure had dropped to 935.

Nothing like cherry picking your end date. Let’s just ignore the “pause” in polar bear decline after 2004. The 2012 estimate for the same area was 1,013. Hmmm…almost 10% increase in less than a decade. We should be able to extrapolate from there and figure out in what year the polar bear population will exceed the human population world wide.

Davis Straight in the 1970’s had less than a thousand bears, now the estimate is more than double that. I recollect that Foxe Basin has also grown about 10% in the last few years.

The UK Guardian invests the same level of scientific objectivity into its articles as it displays fairness in its moderation of public comment within the Comment Is Free sections.
For those fortunate enough to be unaware of the reality of how a once respected newspaper treats those who display dissension, however respectfully, to that of warmistadorial and accreditated travellers can be neatly summed up by the phrase – deleted ‘cos it broke our rules and it was horrible ‘cos it made me want to scream and scream until I was sick (I may be less than word for word here but won’t give an inch about the spirit)
The UK Guardian has transformed itself in less than a decade from a high point of journalism to a level that, notwithstanding hi-faluting faux-intellectualism, displays the worst of the gutter press it deigns to despise

While always referring to published results showing western Hudson Bay polar bears were suffering decreasing body condition (BCI) Stirling and Lunn never published their latest dta showing since that time the body condition had been improving.

The area which I shaded gray represent data that Stirling has claimed is unreliable and thus are not included in population estimates. If population data from 1980s is included then the population has doubled. There mark and recapture study also contradicts the recent aerial survey and mark and recapture studies are notorious for subjectivity as reported here http://landscapesandcycles.net/how-science-counts-bears.html

Here is one example of Stirling’s hypocrisy blaming warming for low bear populations, while in other published reports he reported it was heavy ice that was detrimental. As a co author of “Temporal variations in Hudson Bay ringed seal (Phoca hispida) life-history parameters in relation to environment” he wrote “We propose that the decline of ringed seal reproductive parameters and pup survival in the 1990s could have been triggered by unusually cold winters and heavy ice conditions that prevailed in Hudson Bay in the early 1990s, through nutritional stress and increased predation pressure. The recovery in the 2000s may have been augmented by immigration of pups, juveniles, and young adult ringed seals into the study area.”

This parting shot from an entry at the Polar Bear Alley blog demonstrates a similar contempt for the claims of some.
“So, as usual, its a complicated reality with polar bears… Either way, we have some glitches and all that but its better to focus on the good news this year: the bears for the most part are out on the ice. For the most part, the bears were in good condition (Manitoba Conservation reported that many of their larger bears were around 150lbs heavier than last year). Of course, others did not fare as well including Dancer and a radio-collared female who was reported to have lost her cub this fall. She was disoriented and wandering down the road, her hormones probably all out of whack. Its tough to see but this is part of nature.

Still, these last two season have really put an exclamation mark on what all of the local polar bear guys believe up here: we have not reached a ‘tipping point’ with Churchill’s polar bears, they are not starving, the numbers are not crashing and it is not necessary to remove them from the wild and place them in captivity. So yeah, if I have an ‘agenda’… well, that’s it.

One more note, its funny that over all these years, I have never come across a study that has shown with statistical significance that freezeup is occurring later and later or with any real trend at all, it must be out there somewhere I suppose – it seems to get quoted a lot.”

Boy, no one mention to them that the Manitoba government took three bears from the Churchill area (from the western HB population) to populate the new zoo exhibit in Winnipeg. There’s four bears now, when the exhibit it full there will be about a dozen bears there.

Gee, now they can’t publish in peer-reviewed journals which will require data and stuff, because they’ve published it in The Guardian. How unfortunate that there are all these rules against republication.

With this seasons Ice recovery the bears are back in favour as they cannot use the Ice extent for funding purposes.
If I may draw an analogy.
In Pattaya there are Tshirts proclaiming..No Money, No Honey.
Same with Climate ‘science’ No Honey ie desired proclamations, No Funding.
Easy.
regards

The UK Guardian has transformed itself in less than a decade from a high point of journalism to a level that, notwithstanding hi-faluting faux-intellectualism, displays the worst of the gutter press it deigns to despise
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I feel the same about The Guardian and a couple of other formerly more or less trusted news sources – but then I remember how long I have been seriously viewing a broader range of news sources on the internet. It’s pretty much the same period.
Is it that my original news sources have got worse or is it that I now have regular access to information which shows them up as being often egregiously flawed, trivial and/or biased?
Of course, it is probably a bit of both.

“…it is certainly a truth that computer modelling is dependent on whatever data is used which is why the science is peer reviewed so all facts and figures are checked and re-checked before publication.
That way nothing gets in the way of facts but updated facts.

With believers such as this pushing the pro-AGW barrow, ‘scientists’ who allow their data-free comments to be published in the MSM are reinforcing the thoughtless acolytes’ adherence to the climate change meme.

@artwest. Same here. For those of us that take nothing on belief, the internet provides better access to information than anyone could have ever predicted. This hyper-abundance of information is also why those that take everything on belief find the internet is a source of confusion. “Who can you believe?” they keep asking me. N-O O-N-E, people, no one. There is no reason to believe anyone.

The other thing to like about these graphs , they are plotting “mean estimated mess of lone (and thus likely) adult female polar bears…”

So they have not weighed them, have not got close enough to tell whether they ARE pregnant, so what is all this based on? Apparently eye-balling them from a safe distance with binoculars and guessing their body weight.

This must be great, end-of-year game in Churchill. GUESS THE POLAR BEAR’S WEIGHT AND WIN A SNOW EQUIPPED S.U.V. !!!

I bet if they sold loto tickets they could raise lots of money to help fight global warming.

(Mind you if I lived in Churchill I may not be too set against the prospect of a bit of warming).

Kudos to Dr Susan Crockford for highlighting yet more bad practice and propaganda.

The other question this all raises in the total absence of any REAL data, is what are the numbers of sightings used in these estimations?

In view of the last polar bear research fiasco, which apparently was all spun out of the spotting of one dead bear from an aeroplane flight and then spinning it into a projection of arctic wide population decline, we are going to look a bit carefully about any such claims from now on.

Anthony,
Since you mentioned bears, in passing. Did you know that there’s a new subspecies of bear evolving in California, in places like Yosemite and the W shore of Tahoe. It split off from Black Bears, in much the same way that dogs split off from wolves 15k years ago. Both subspecies are better adapted to living near humans than their thoroughly wild parent species. The new bear subspecies is called Ursus Garbagiensus. :)

There ought to be a means of prosecuting those who put out or publish press releases containing false information simply to support a personal agenda. We can refute their arguments with true facts as much as we like through these blogs, but in spite of The Guardians lowering standards of journalism, the fact remains that a lot of people still read the paper, and even objective readers will be convinced by the message that the article sends out,no matter how false its contents, and before long we will all be hearing statements from friends and innocent casual observers “but why are the polar bears declining if ther is no global warming” Thus, the false arguments of the AGW nutters are strengthened to the detriment of the well argued sceptic viewpoint.

Wow, most likely Polar Bear scientists saw a far more serious lack off grant money on the horizon as a far more of a threat to their cushy megastar climate scientist lifestyle. I wonder what’s in that green bubble we will all find out when it bursts.

Polar bear populations are easy to determine using this simple formula; count their noses and divide by one. It helps if you put a little dot of fluorescent orange paint on each nose you count to avoid double-counting.
The advantages of this system is that it is very accurate and it requires a large number of polar bear researchers, so there will be plenty of employment opportunities in this field. The only drawback I see is that careers are typically very short.

P.S. If you’re looking for that missing heat, check the polar bears’ pockets. Might as well frisk them for contraband heat as long as you’re painting their nose.

The continuation of these activists existence on the public payroll, says nothing good about our policy makers.
Kleptocracy comes to mind, not sober assessment of the facts and public interest.
CAGW is a creation of bureaucrats.

Betapug
“Bypass the American blockade with a short 1200Km pipeline to Churchill?”

Nice idea, but given the port is only functional for about 1/3-1/4 of the year, it’s not really practical. Grain only ships out of there for about 8 or so weeks, maybe a little more. Part of that is a function of harvest being in late summer (August) but part of it is the danger of ice along the route.

Given the biggest danger to polar bear cubs are adult male polar bears , so to save the cute little ones you have to deal with the 300 pound killing machine which is there only predator.
Anyone who thinks otherwise hates small polar bears , and probable puppy dogs, and are clearly not thinking of the children.
As for Goldenberg , she is another in the line of human reprographics machines of green PR who claim to be journalists , that long ago stop asking any questions,

Given the biggest danger to polar bear cubs are adult male polar bears ,
==========================================================
Actually the greatest danger to the entire polar bear population was a man with a rifle. Since we have stopped shooting polar bears, they are doing quite well.

Around our house when something disappears we have a standard answer “it’s probably in a safe place” and when they magically reappears weeks later the book was thinner and wallet is empty, sounds alot like this “study” of the Hudson Bay, (hey, but then maybe they were doing a study to discover The Hudson Bay COMPANY, that sadly has disappeared from said area.

In the 1960s I used to read the old Manchester Guardian. It was a fine newspaper. Last FridayI saw a copy of the Guardian that included a replica of the coverage of the assasination of President Kennedy – with excellent articles at the time by Alastair Cooke who was their main US correspondent plus the likes of Norman Shrapnel and Hella Pick.

Today’s Guardian “journalists” are dwarves by comparison. But the Guardian is dangerous – it has a miniscule number of daily purchasers for the paper, but it is the house gospel for the BBC which dominates UK news supply. The BBC and the Guardian are in lock-step in their false coverage of climate issues.

I pray for the day when the BBC and its $6 billion licence tax is cut down to size – and the day when the Guardian finally folds under its heavy financial losses.

Matthew W says: November 29, 2013 at 10:41 am
KNR says:November 29, 2013 at 10:30 am
Given the biggest danger to polar bear cubs are adult male polar bears ,
==========================================================
Actually the greatest danger to the entire polar bear population was a man with a rifle. Since we have stopped shooting polar bears, they are doing quite well.

– Very true and as long as mommy is around the males will not risk it. They might be bigger but the aren’t stupid.

“In Canada the hunting and harvest of polar bears is restricted to Aboriginal people or sport hunters guided by Aboriginal people who harvest by traditional means” – In this context I think “traditional” means dogsled and not snowmobiles. You don’t want to be out there with a bow, arrows and spears (unless you have serious thrill issues).

“Quotas are set that take into account recommendations from federal provincial and territorial scientists, university specialists as well as United States researchers based in Alaska. “

JBJ says:November 29, 2013 at 2:26 pm
“Actually the greatest danger to the entire polar bear population was a man with a rifle. Since we have stopped shooting polar bears, they are doing quite well.”
Polar bears are still hunted in the Arctic!
=====================================
Point Taken
I didn’t anticipate the pedantry of having to add “Unrestricted” to my point

“Of course, others did not fare as well including Dancer and a radio-collared female who was reported to have lost her cub this fall. She was disoriented and wandering down the road, her hormones probably all out of whack. Its tough to see but this is part of nature.”
———————————————————————————
Does it ever occur to these “researchers” that capturing, knocking out, and placing a radio collar on an animal might negatively affect It?

Polar bear populations are a sensitive topic for the Canadian government, which has faced international criticism for its policies on climate change and for allowing limited hunting of bears, mainly by indigenous communities….

….for example, has shrunk by nearly 10% to 850 bears in under a decade, according to the latest Canadian government estimate seen by the Guardian….

The latest Canadian government estimates, which have yet to be shared with independent scientists or the public,…

“You can see their backbones and their hips and shoulder blades when they are moving and they are visibly thin,” said Ian Stirling, a wildlife biologist at the University of Alberta, who has studied the population for more than 35 years.

OK. No photos of skinny polar bears from Stirling I see. Goldenberg of the Guardian may have let the cat out of the bag in her very first paragraph which mentions ‘limiting hunting’, and how do they keep track of any illegal hunting? What about polluting contaminants, disease, migration?

“Abstract
……a radio-collared adult female polar bear in the Beaufort Sea made a continuous swim of 687 km over 9 days and then intermittently swam and walked on the sea ice surface an additional 1,800 km…..The extraordinary long distance swimming ability of polar bears, which we confirm here, may help them cope with reduced Arctic sea ice……”http://cat.inist.fr/?aModele=afficheN&cpsidt=24131717

chris moffatt says:
November 30, 2013 at 5:27 am
“It has warmed a lot in Eastern Canada over the last 17 years … if you lived here you would know that. Question is … how long will this last … this years ice looks like its forming faster!”

“Tell it to my brother who lives near Montreal and can’t find any consistent climate warming.”

David L. Hagen says:
November 28, 2013 at 4:12 pm I recommend submitting this to be reproduced in the Journal of Irreproducible Results and for a potential Ignoble Award.

Not sure it fits. It looks a different category to me, this does not “first make people laugh” and then “make them think”. Hm, ok, we can debate on this actually.
However:
“The prizes are intended to celebrate the unusual, honor the imaginative — and spur people’s interest in science, medicine, and technology”

This science by press release has a different effect. It is trying to bully people with things presented as science.
A paper without raw data and clear description of methodology is not a scientific paper. It qualifies for “the science” not science.

To me this rather looks like the medieval organization a procession of flagellant:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flagellant
under guidance of “the science”, where we, the stupid sinners, must march on and flagellate ourselves for the foregivens of our sins and do so reparations.

My Grandpappy always said “you believe what newspapers say until they write about something you know about”.

Stan,

Sad but true.

For years, my father read Time magazine. This was from the forties through the eighties.

Because of this, I was a long time reader of Time. Until I began to notice they got their facts wrong when writing on topics I knew something about. Usually not out and out lies, but enough twisting to give a false impression of the topic.

So I quit reading Time magazine. Haven’t cracked a copy in decades. Couldn’t count on it to give me enough factual information to form a legitimate opinion.

For the same reason I had to quit reading Scientific American. It really should be renamed Politically Correct American. Sorry to say, SA out and out lied about matters. It just broke my heart because I loved to go to the library and read the latest copies through the sixties. Some of the older issues are still fun to read.